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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, April 14, 2006

NOOOOOOOO!!!!! 

...the ground is finally almost bare, with just scattered gray snow-lumps around the lawn and out through the timber, or piled up against the sides of the metal-roofed buildings. All the snow tires are stacked neatly in their storage area in the garage. It's been 6 months since the ground was this bare and the promise of spring is almost ponderous in the wind...

...and now this...
HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PENDLETON OR
430 AM PDT FRI APR 14 2006
.DAY ONE...TODAY AND TONIGHT..

A FRONT WILL MOVE THROUGH THE AREA TODAY…SNOW ACCUMULATION WILL BE UP TO 4 INCHES NEAR THE CASCADE CREST...UP TO 2 INCHES ELSEWHERE ON THE EAST SLOPES OF THE CASCADES...

.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...SATURDAY THROUGH THURSDAY..

…THE UPPER LEVEL TROUGH WILL REMAIN OFFSHORE THROUGH THE WEEKEND.
DISTURBANCES WILL ROTATE THROUGH THE TROUGH AND KEEP PRECIPITATION
OVER THE AREA THROUGH THE WEEKEND. SNOW LEVELS WILL REMAIN GENERALLY BETWEEN 2000 AND 4000 FEET THE REST OF THE WEEKEND. THIS MAY RESULT IN A LONG DURATION SNOW EVENT...WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATIONS AT THE HIGHER MOUNTAIN ELEVATIONS...


...the next person that makes even a passing reference to "The Warmest Winter On Record" is getting thrown in the river...

UPDATE: Central Oregon - specifically the area where I live - is now under a snow advisory for up to 8 inches of snow through Sunday. The Willamette Valley rain that I used to curse is looking pretty good right now...
Posted by: Jack K. / 1:25 PM 0 comments

It's All The Democrats' Fault 

…if somebody were to tell me that the Republican party was going to run ad’s blaming Congressional Democrats for the felony provisions in the House-passed immigration reform bill, I’d laugh politely while backing slowly away and looking for a sturdy stick because – in a normal world – only a truly dangerous and off-kilter mind could conceive such an absurd story.

I keep forgetting that I don’t live in a normal world.

In a bit of spin so bold that it takes the word “misrepresentation” out of play, the Republicans are going to do just that, in Spanish, in various border states in the Southwest. While Harry Reid was suitably and promptly snarky about Gee Dub’s accusations yesterday, such displays of backbone haven't been all that common. This new little bit of political legerdemain by the Republicans, however, had better serve as the wakeup call for any Democrat serious about trying to take back one or both chambers of Congress; Republicans, having tasted the sweet new fruits of power, are going to say and do anything to hold onto that power. Nothing less than sharp, brutal hand to hand combat will wrestle that control out of their hands...

One of the clear problems that the Democrats have faced, and blame can be placed at various doorsteps but it’s beyond time where that really matters anymore, is that they have been invisible. That’s not the same thing as saying that they didn’t matter; House Republicans up until 1994 didn’t matter either, as far as the function of Congress was concerned. The difference is that they weren’t invisible. They challenged the Democratic majority and were loud and abrasive and confrontational. I mean, let’s be honest here: Democrats may have thought less about Newt because of his treatment of ex-wives, but the core reason for the dislike that he generated was because he wouldn’t shut up. Democrats, for a variety of reasons, have let themselves become trapped in the Cone of Silence, and their invisibility and meekness have led us to this point where the Republican party feels that it can with impunity twist the factiod of one particular intermediate House vote on immigration into blaming the Dem’s for the current felony provisions in the House bill, even though it is a clear matter of public record that the final bill with it’s felony provisions passed by virtue of almost exclusively Republican votes. If the Democrats are serious about taking back the House, they need to go directly after this sort of nonsense on all fronts. There is little left to fear of the Republican party; all they have left is their base, and it isn’t big enough to carry the day. Most other folks don’t think much of Republicans at either the Congressional or presidential level, and there probably is little risk in forcefully adding this ad campaign onto the list of lies, corruption, and comfy insider dealings that have led us down that wrong path that the majority of Americans think we are on…

Republicans have gotten a lot of mileage over the years out of the fact that most folks don't pay much attention to what's going on. Furthermore, their efforts to try to bring blacks and Hispanics in to try out the cheap seats in the back of that Big Tent they always talk about building have made it painfully obvious that they don't think those folks are either terribly aware or smart. They know they are in trouble over this immigration bill, however, so they're going back to the well one more time by continuing the desperate effort of trying to blame everything on the Democrats . If Democrats don’t seize the moment and start pushing back now, forcefully exposing the lies and bringing the truth to the light of day, November 7 could be a grim time…
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:47 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

And, So, The Next Step Is....Boycott 

...you had to know that this sort of story was going to come out of Monday's protests over congressional immigration reform. Given all the circumstances surrounding the employment and circumstances of the employees, a suitably cynical mind can easily arrive at the conclusion that, no, the warnings the company said it issued may well not have been. Regardless of who's story is correct - and it's not that hard to guess who's story is on the up and up - there's an obvious solution to those particular issues surrounding the termination of employees at the Wolverine Packing facility...

Boycott. Don't buy their products. Scour the grocery store shelves to find Wolverine meat products and put the word out not to buy 'em. It's a simple solution to one small corner of the inherent racist flaws that plague current efforts at immigration reform. Republicans are working hard to create a strong racist surge against Hispanics in a way that would be ultimately damaging to legal residents as well as illegals. A little boycott action might do them and their anti-immigration some good...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:26 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Monday Nite Brading 'Meetup' with Kos and Jerome - Be There! 

...one of the most lamentable losses that this wild-eyed age of partisan politics has delivered to us is the general demise of moderate Republicans. Oregon was, back in the day, a virtual factory for such a product, churning out the sorts of figures like Mark Hatfield and Don Packwood (before the boxed wine problems drove him from office) who were most certainly Republicans but who had a moderation in their postitions that made Oregonians comfortable in sending them back to office again and again. Tom McCall, the late former Republican governor famous for his "come to visit but don't stay" mantra, is a virtual icon in this state for the creation of the Oregon Bottle Bill, land use planning regulations that today's Republicans are taking shots at with a crowbar at every opportunity, and a host of other lesser-known initiatives that made Oregon such an attractive place to live. They don't make 'em much like that anymore; Lynn Lundquist was driven from leadership in the state legislature for being an insufficiently true believer of the vicious New Way, and Ben Westlund from here in Central Orygun has left the party (after a rocky relationship over the last year or so, particularly regarding his support of civil unions for same-sex couples) to run for governor as an independent. State House Majority Leader Karen Minnis doesn't suffer from these problems; she is a True Believer of the New Politics of the Rich Few Well-To-Do over the concerns of the majority of citizens, and Rob Brading would like to do something to fix the particularly nasty little neo-con problem she represents in an effort to get things done, like raising Oregon's public school system to something other than a political cartoon joke or actually having enough state police on the roads to lend some meaning to our speed limits and traffic laws (not to mention eliminating the 30-minute or longer wait for help at an accident site that you can run into out here in the hinterlands) or perhaps even introducing some sense of truth and sanity to the state budgetary process...

Tomorrow night, a couple of Big Dogs are going to roll into Stumptown for a grassroots fundraiser in Rob Brading's effort to provide Minnis with the opportunity to explore career options after legislative service. Marcos Moulitsas Zuniga - way more famously known as Kos of Daily Kos - and Jerome Armstrong - cofounder of MyDD, coauthors of a new book about net grassroots entitled "Crashing the Gates", will be at McMenamin's Kennedy School and Brew Pub in Portland tomorrow night to put into practice the very style of grassroots politics that they advocate in their book. If you have the opportunity and are in the area, this is a chance to actually put some money where the mouth is in an effort to tell the neocon wingnuts who have made Oregon the laughing stock of the nation that their time here is done. You can look here for more information about the event. For those of you in the upper Willamette Valley, Be There or Be Square; my children are counting on you...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:35 PM 0 comments

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